Tranzcarr have recently been working on delivering bridge beams to the Waikato Expressway/City Edge Alliance Project, and during the month of July they have made delivery of 36 beams, weighing 50T each and 30m long. This is for two of the bridges on this project – Matangi Road and the ECTMR Bridge. The ECTMR bridge alone was 24 beams, which they delivered in a period of five days.

To achieve this they used four rigs, which have a manpower requirement of four people each – a driver and three pilots, which means they were running a crew of 16 people per day. For beams of this size they use a dolly and jinker arrangement, and due to some of the tight turns involved they have had to manually steer the rear jinker around some of the corners. Machinery Movers have several other bridges pending for this project, the next being in September and this will include 38m long/70T beams.

Tranzcarr work directly for the pre-cast concrete companies who produce the beams. However, they also work together with the delivery site to establish a delivery timetable, which way they will access the site, and which way the beams will be loaded. As they have travel time restrictions for over-dimensional cargo, this usually takes a lot of pre-planning, including finding a lay-up area on site as they may have a requirement to bring several beams in prior to the travel time curfew to ensure they can make continuous deliveries through this period. They also need to liaise with the crane company who will be offloading and placing the beams onsite, and the pre-cast manufacturer for reloading purposes, as they are often making more than one delivery per rig per day.

Tranzcarr usual client is the pre-cast concrete manufacturer; however, as mentioned above, they work closely with their client, and this is usually one of the alliances that will be in charge of the major roading projects.